Today is the day Guild Wars will move on. It’s not a swan song per se, but I just can’t imagine Guild Wars having any further update bigger than the one for today. This update will change the game to such a degree that it might as well be Guild Wars 1.5 now. This is not to belittle the upcoming story content updates, which I am anticipating heavily, but just to paint a brief notion of the magnitude of this thing. First, here’s a WarTower interview with Live Team head, John Stumme:
Category: Guild Wars
.
Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.
.[GW] GuildMag Issue #6
Just wanted to put in a quick plug for the gang over at GuildMag. They just dropped Issue 6, and they interview me in it. I hope the answers turned out okay because they were done over IM, which is format I am not used to for answering questions. They are a great community hub for all things Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 so poke around their site as well.
–Ravious
Guild Wars Guru 2011 GvG Championship Series
This is pretty amazing, but Guild Wars Guru is setting up a Guild Wars GvG (Guild vs. Guild) Championship Series complete with divisions and prizes in each division. Given that we are nearing the 6 year mark for Guild Wars, and Guild Wars 2 is going in to player testing this year, I am just amazed at some of the things the Guild Wars PvP community is still doing. For another example, every month now the GvG Monthly Automated Tournament (MAT) is casted. Replays are available for awhile in game, but many times it is hard to understand what is going on, especially if the viewer is not familiar with the current meta. Anyway, Guru has a wide range of divisions, including one for casual players unfamiliar with GvG. The prizes include some pretty good stuff (video cards, headsets, etc.), and I hope that there will be some really good competition coming from this tournament.
–Ravious
[GW2] Humans – Can You Hear the Thunder?
The most interesting part, in my mind, of the Guild Wars 2 human week was not what was told. That is not to say I wasn’t incredibly impressed with the setup and delivery. It’s just that if I were to choose a human as my main character, I might want to look at what they aren’t saying… Where the focus wasn’t.
For good reason, Guild Wars 2 is narrowing the scope of the world back to the continent of Tyria where the first Guild Wars, Prophecies, took place. There are five playable races, of which all but two are believed to be native to the Tyrian continent. The charr and the sylvari are definitely native. Asura came from beneath the Tyrian continent, and have never spoken of being in other places in the world. Finally, the norn’s origins are unknown, but their are theories they might be half-human anyway (given that they… might be the same species in the most copulatory sense). This leaves the most decidedly non-native humans.
[GW] A Whirling Change
The Nightfall professions in Guild Wars always felt the most separated from the core professions. There were definitely times were the paragons and dervishes were some of the most powerful entities on the battlefield, but they always felt like some mirror-world offspring of the core warrior profession. Well ArenaNet has been working hard on two huge updates, and last night the valiant leader of the Guild Wars Live Team posted a huge preview for the dervish changes. The goal of the dervish update was to give it’s style of play more meaning and to cultivate the essence of a dervish, rather than having an enchantment heavy warrior.
10 Years of ArenaNet
It’s been a full decade of life over at ArenaNet. I can still remember anticipating their first offering, and getting way more excited than World of Warcraft (I did not like Everquest). I still remember seeing some of their first screenshots with the horrible-crafted trolls. I can still remember posting my first suggestion on the only Guild Wars forum at the time (I think it was The Guild Hall, but I can’t remember). I wanted to be able to have grizzled trophies of foes I had slain in my own guild hall. I suggested that if a guild kills 500 goblins, they could get a goblin head mounted by the fireplace. Sadly, it never made it in the game.
More importantly, ArenaNet is sharing their memories in this amazing video. I think with how Guild Wars 2 is shaping up, they will definitely have ten more.
What are your first memories of Guild Wars and ArenaNet?
–Ravious
Thoughts and Speculations on the Support Class
This is a guest article from Captain Scrat.
————
For a long time we have known that ArenaNet; the makers of the fine game we all love, Guild Wars, have decided it is time to break the stone engraved rules of the holy trinity: The Tank (a player that will be able to hold the pressure of attacks from the NPC), The DPS (a very strong player that will deal as much as possible of damage per second) and The Monk (a key part of the trinity that will be able to keep the tank and the others alive). ArenaNet wanted to come up with a new concept of battle for their upcoming game: Guild Wars 2. They have always tried to distinguish themselves and make something different that the traditional MMO’s do not have. In this case, it was the idea of breaking the holy trinity.
Continue reading Thoughts and Speculations on the Support Class
Tapas Gaming
Anybody that has followed this blog for awhile knows that we tend to have cycles of gaming and writing. I am currently going through a little downtime with MMOs. Perhaps it’s my subconscious prepping me for the intensity of 2011, the year of MMOs. I still have been gaming, even with MMOs. Yet, it’s been very different. I have not sat down for a long 2-4 hour session on a single game in quite some time. The seemingly endless Steam sale is only making it worse.
The games that are still on my short list all allow very quick bites of gameplay. I just beat Shatter’s story mode. It was a great buy for $2.50, and hopefully Steam will put it back up on sale. As that game left the short list, Super Meat Boy took its place. $15 is about $5 too expensive for my tastes, but the $4 I bought it for might as well have been free. The game is a fantastic, high-speed platforming romp. My favorite part is the combined replay of all my failures when I finally beat the level. It’s hilarious to see 10 out of 20 meat boys jump straight in to the nearest grind saw. Friend me up on Steam so you can see how much faster I am than you.
[GW] A More Divine Wintersday
As with other MMOs, Guild Wars winter holiday celebration has arrived. Wintersday 2010 is here until January 3. This year there are two significant additions to the festival, and the Hearts of the North chapter in Guild Wars: Beyond wraps up. I have to say that I am pretty impressed with the amount of content the Live Team is getting out. I know there was a big hiccup during con season, but I hope this is more akin to the steady pace we might be seeing in the future.
First off, there are new buyable costumes: Agent of Balthazar costume and the Disciple of Melandru costume. One enterprising fan at Guru actually found the concept art for the costumes stuck in with a Guild Wars 2 concept art bunch. Anyway, they are pretty cool. I really like the Balthazar one, and I am considering picking it up. The Melandru one is a bit too… alien or Sylvari-ish for me. I guess I prefer spikes and horns to leaves.
[GW] Mystery of the Lost Love and Content
Between cursing at Steam and Shatter, I put in some good time with the next Guild Wars: Beyond chapter, Hearts in the North. I know I am a little late to the party since the content dropped nearly a month ago, but I had to take a small break after vanquishing Elona and getting my Hall of Monuments past 35. I have plans for 40, but it does feel like work sometimes. Thankfully, I have plenty of fun available in my gaming stable. (I want to take a moment to curse at Shatter’s Bonus Mode again. Thanks.)
This next small chapter in Guild Wars: Beyond is a great break from the grind involved in working on the Hall of Monuments. Instead of running around in a party of 8, players take the reins of Keiran Thackeray, an ally of the Shining Blade that went MIA in the beginning siege of the White Mantle on Lion’s Arch. Keiran gets his own skillbar, and the gameplay is balanced for him and his sidekick, Miku, to stand against hundreds of White Mantle.